Snow Angels
by phantomwriter05
Summary: Returning home after years in the future, John Connor, Jaded and Haunted by the reality of what kind of world he "Saved" he finds salvation in an unlikely source and discovery. Jameron. Sarah/Derek. One-Shot.


**Sorry Guise ... I'm been in a tight spot lately on the ability to focus on writing in my current residence ... So alot of my Serial stories have grown a little dusty.**

**But for the last month I've been writting some commission work for people requesting on Tumblr. So I have several Jameron one shots sitting on the hard drive. So while I move into a house and out of this shit hole apartment, I'll post them on the TSCC tag till I get rolling again on the serials. **

_**Snow Angels**_

A soft wind had weaved through the stalwart white coded foliage that stood sentry around the old wooden cabin. Plumes of modest smoke puffed from the stone chimney that was erect into the bitter winter air, a rock against the blankets of cascading snow.

Outside, feet straight in front of him, a man sat expressionless on a wraparound porch. His green eyes seemed haunted and hardened from being the witness to the strange and horrible. The weaving snake of mother nature tossed the not so young anymore's hair into his eyes, his left marred by a scar across his left eye. Protecting him from the cold caress was a leather coat, an old companion through the battlefields and tragedies of a never known war.

A soft hand pushed his locks out of his face. A female crouched next to him, long raven hair caught in the wind. Her hardened emerald eyes, identical to her companion lightened as she stared at a man closer to her age then she ever wanted him to be.

"We're going to get a few things … pizza maybe? What do you think?" She asked tenderly.

John Connor brought his knee's to his chest and nodded to the familiar stranger. Nothing really separated this world from the next. He came home, got what he wanted from the future. Yet it didn't seem to matter. The world didn't know, wouldn't know about what happened. Many years of striving for that kind of safety and yet now that he had it … no one would ever know the good men who died to avenge it, to stop it. The pits of charred bones of infants, the rallying cry of every creed and religion in uniting to stop one foe. But here in the present … they killed each other, hated each other. The Men and Women of the future died and sacrificed themselves only to buy more time before humanity finished itself off.

No amount of Pizza in the world could stop that … or fight away pictures of a little plaid uniform set crumpled on stained sheets or a blood filled alley that poisoned his mind so much so that it rendered useless the loving touch of the only woman he ever felt safe around.

Her name was Savannah Weaver, a friend in the future, an innocent soul in the present. Jim Edger was a struggling guitarist, who dealt drugs to fuel his addiction to porn. In a marijuana fueled brainstorm and a picture of a newly orphaned heiress worth millions in tech money on the television. All it took was a curious nature and a love for small animals and she was his prisoner. John Connor still a man of action set out to find her. Night after night, He scoward for leads. It was after breaking a pimps arm in five places and crippling a bald biker woman with a swastika on her chest who distributed Child pornography, he was directed to the Condo of her best customer "Guitar" Jim. But after searching bursting into the empty apartment, he searched high and low, all he found was Savannah's clothes.

Sarah Connor and John's Uncle Derek Reese, found a half crazed John that rainy night in an alley "Guitar Jims" favorite dealing spot, in his trembling hand was a bent and blood soaked crow bar. He stood over the body of a thin, dirty man who smelled like stale smoke. His face pummeled into a soup of broken bones and caved in skull.

Sarah thought that a little isolation was needed afterward. She and John had inherited a cabin in Bear Creek from Sarah's wealthy family. She thought that maybe the quiet and scenery might heal John of a different era of vigilante law being the only law.

But since that night, he had said nothing, done nothing … he sat on the front porch watching the snow saying nothing. Most of the time kept company by his silent guardian Cameron who joined his watch of the snow glide, shoulder to shoulder.

But she wasn't there now.

John turned to look at his mother, lifting a hand and squeezing her leather clad arm, in a silent acknowledgement. She leaned in and kissed his bearded cheek in a gentle peck that only a women who truly loved her child could find in her heart. Standing she shared a deep look with Derek Reese who watched his nephew with haunted hazel eyes mixed with sympathy of true knowledge of circumstance.

Derek Reese said nothing to the man as he passed, in step with Sarah. He placed a hand on his nephew's shoulder and squeezed. John followed the two to Sarah's 67 Chevy sitting idly. Green eyes followed, feeling as if the veteran soldier had something to show him. But all perceptive emerald's saw was a more involved relationship between the occupants of the muscle car then they had let on in public. In the dark of the night, two antiquated parental figures without a purpose, climbing under the sheets of the same bed. Wordlessly holding on to one another, letting a familiar fear of neglect and uselessness pass the long night in the comfort of a kindred souls kiss to a temple and strong arms securing your courage to face a new tomorrow.

But John Connor was too jaded to care anymore what it was that Derek was trying to show him. Maybe it was a stance long before he went to the future to find Cameron, maybe before he saw Cameron. It was a flaw of a parent holding on too tight, who loved her child too much, who only had him. But John Connor didn't see a world full of possibilities anymore. All he saw when he walked the streets of the city, he saw ruins. When he saw a woman in a short skirt he didn't see a strong young lady full of confidence, He saw a mother who told her daughter she was a slut, and now she is what her parent labeled her. A drunk man singing in the street celebrating a promotion, He was nothing more than a ticking time bomb waiting to mug a man for a couple of bucks when his future drinking problem caused him to lose that promotion.

There was no point in living in a world that he had no stake in anymore. A sacrifice not worth the blood spilled for a people who cared as little for it as they cared for each other. Good people die, bad ones laugh at it and the world spins on, never knowing.

"John"

He looked up to find a lithe female, in her teens, a purple leather motorcycle jacket, a scarf tied around her neck, a knitted cap over her head. Her long brown hair fluttered in the wind and her brown eyes seemed almost amused under an emotionless mask. His gaze fell on her, followed by the deep tracks she left on the lawn.

"John … I discovered something." She said motioning her head toward the woods.

He didn't seem so dead when she looked so enthusiastic … for a cyborg that is. "What?" His voice was hard and dark from age and disuse. Suddenly the cyborg dropped to the floor out of sight.

A deep fear from long ago stung him, a feeling of helpless desperation for a cyborg used up and torn apart, seeing her chrome appearing under bullet wounds. Even in with the marked chrome and battle armor there was guilt from a long dead teenage boy of how vulnerable and used up she had looked.

The man moved faster than anyone could imagine a man so motionless for a two weeks could move when he saw his companion drop. He was to the stairs and to the front lawn. He stopped and whirled to find his friend, the sound of shuffling snow in his ear.

Cameron was lying on the ground in a snow drift, she was full spread eagle. John rushed to her but halted when her arms and legs began moving in up and down in the snow, feet touching and coming apart.

"See …" She called, doing it a couple more times, till John offered her a hand up. She didn't need it, but took it all the same. A genetic explosion of broad frame and muscles from rigorous exercise had made John a specimen of intense strength. He barely gritted teeth, pulling the slender machine to her feet.

"Look at that …" She said with extreme interest and almost the ghost of amusement if you set your sight just right. A figure of a heavenly creature was framed in the newly fallen snow of the late afternoon.

John lifted an eyebrow at her creation. "You mean a snow angel?" he asked.

"Snow isn't created by Angels …" She protested.

He wasn't sure how she did it, but somehow he found a smile for her innocent rebuke of a statement she misunderstood.

"No …" He also found a surprising laugh as well. "It's what they call a snow Angel. Doesn't it look like an angel?" He asked. The cyborg tilted her head in thought before turning back to him.

"I don't know …" She sounded puzzled. "What do Angels look like?" She asked.

He wasn't aware till now how close she was to him, arms wrapped around her waist to steady her from her trip off the ground. The wind kicked up and captured her hair, her cheeks rosy from the cold. She looked so innocent, so beautiful … she was like …

"You …" He said before he could stop himself. Yet, why stop himself? All these weeks of disillusionment and all the darkness surrounding his life … the few bright moments of true happiness in his memories where somehow always involving her. The moment of fixing his mother's washing machine, an explosion of soap that drenched them … yet her reaction was to blow a mound of suds off his nose. Hours spent watching her dance, her movements capturing his imagination, freeing his mind from the nightmares of years in hell to come.

"Are we in the realm of illusional theory?" She asked.

"Are you an illusion?" He asked getting closer to her face.

Her eyes followed him, spotting his lips for a moment, but she didn't move away. "Some might think so?" She replied seriously, the last stop gap before oblivion of complications and feelings that might or might not be there for him.

He lifted a large hand, sweeping the back of it gently across her cheek, knuckles gracefully tracing strong cheekbones. "Not to me." He whispered. He took her soft lower lip in between both of his for a moment, before breaking off. It was only when he saw that look in her eyes and the feeling of lonely isolation melt away that he fully understood what Derek wanted to show him. Derek Reese saw what John had, fought the battles John had … and remained alive and functioning, because of Sarah Connor. Derek had Sarah, he had something to keep him alive and that was someone to wake up to.

John wanted to wait for a reaction to know what it will all mean now, but instead Cameron laid her head against his shoulder as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She invited him for the real thing and he never looked back when he pressed his lips to hers … and some might say that they'd been that way since.

In all of the little ironies in the history of humanity and in the personal beliefs of the Connor family it took the innocence of a killer who wasn't defined by her maker to save a man of flesh and blood. A hero lost in his own head created in a jaded world of violence and destruction saved by the love of something more than wires.

Angels often are never what they appear to be in tapestries.


End file.
